Whether you aspire to be a freelance artist or a designer at a big ad agency, a degree in graphic design will help make your dreams come true. Graphic designers create visual concepts by hand or with computers, and communicate ideas to enlighten and attract consumers. They work with logos, photos, drawings, and other designs used in advertising and promotion. And the U.S. Labor Department says the demand for graphic designers will increase by nearly 15 percent in the coming decade. Graphic designers are being hired for website production, corporate communications, magazine production, printing and publishing, and marketing.
About one-third of graphic designers work independently from home. Others work at in-house creative departments, design firms, or ad agencies. Whatever the work environment, projects created by designers give form to communications between clients and their target audiences. Designers learn how a client wants to be perceived by its audience and shape the message the client wants to send. This leaves the designer to determine the best type of media to convey the message.
Graphic design projects are as varied as the client but fall into several broad categories. Digital design involves manipulating symbols, photos, and images with computer software. Multimedia design brings sound, video, and animation into the mix to draw attention to clients’ message or attract hits to websites. Beyond the web, multimedia designers work in a variety of other mediums, from film graphics to those ubiquitous popups blasting across the bottom of the screen during your favorite TV shows.design is everywhere from soup cans to billboards and t-shirts. Specialists in the field work in education design, environmental design, and exhibition design. And design remains an important element in the publishing business. As lead Rolling Stone graphic designer Gale Anderson explains, designers work in conjunction with the art director, editors, and photo editors to add a “visual voice” to the text. “We try to pull the reader in with unique and lively opening pages and follow through with turnpages that have a good balance of photos and pulled quotes to keep the reader interested. The designer’s role has certainly expanded, and I think it is taken more seriously than it was even a few years ago.”